Seeing as Cole has put us in a food mood and it’s late on a Saturday night, I hope, my dears, that you will forgive me a little indulgence. I know many of you like reading about food (and, not incidentally, eating good food), and I suspect you might not mind if I were to tell you about a meal that I enjoyed on my trip to Japan at the beginning of the year.
I have been lucky enough over the years to eat at many fine restaurants. I’ve been rouxed and ramsayed and blumenthaled. I’ve been sneered at by waiters in the finest establishments in France and New York. I’ve even eaten an omelet made by the very hands of Julia Child herself.*
However, my recent meal at Takazawa in Tokyo has eclipsed all of those.
Knowing that I was only going to be in Tokyo for a few brief nights, I was determined to sample the best that it had to offer and damn the expense.
On our first night, therefore, we ate at the (apparently) legendary Ten Ichi, a tempura restaurant in the Ginza. No bain-marie-cooled and lumpy batter here. Rather, as we sat at the bench around the cooking area, wearing our bibs and scoffing Asahi, the chef coolly mixed his batter, skimmed his wok of boiling oil, and proceeded to place before us a seemingly endless succession of deep fried treats. Two shrimp, a single glassy scallop, one flawless mushroom, a tiny fish (head, bones, tail and all) and more, each piping hot within their paper-thin shell of batter, each ready to be topped to taste with a sprinkle of salt or a dab of curry powder or a squeeze of lemon before being gobbled down. Afterwards we retired to a table where we sipped little cups of pea-green tea and I ate a slice of melon so perfect I suspect I can never eat melon again.
All this, however, was mere foreplay for the pleasures that awaited us the next evening.
At night, the Akasaka area seems almost to vibrate with the flash of neon, the welcoming shouts of the chefs at the teppanyaki restaurants and the roaring rattle of a million pachinko balls. We escaped finally into a dimly lit laneway, where a dozen identical black limousines, their engines idling, waited for the great and the powerful to finish work. Almost at the end of the lane we found the gently glowing door that leads to chef Yoshiaki Takazawa’s restaurant.
Climbing the stairs, with their poetry-inscribed banister (“I think that I shall never see, A poem lovely as a tree …”), I was giddy with anticipation and unaccountably nervous. We were warmly welcomed by Takazawa-san’s wife, Akiko, who manages the restaurant and, along with a single assistant, conducts the entire service. Akiko is truly charming and explains just enough about each dish.
The restaurant is a single, windowless yet warmly-lit room. At one end sits the raised, brushed-aluminum platform at which Takazawa performs, his assistant appearing from the kitchen behind with the partially completed dishes, ready for the chef to place the finishing touches. Each night, there are at most three tables, and this evening there were a mere seven guests.